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ajc
Citizen
Username: Ajc
Post Number: 4785
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 12:35 pm: |     |
I don't know about this, but sometimes I post a comment and it kills the thread!
I mean it kills it dead as a door nail. It could be going along at 100 miles an hour, then I make an innocent little comment and it stops it dead in its tracks. Something like this could give a guy a complex you know...
Listen, I know I'm far from alone in this category, but it would be interested to know what the stats are on these thread killers...
I'm not suggesting they should be arrested or anything like that. But maybe at a “face to face” they should be cuffed so as not to kill any of the more kinder and gentler posters? 
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LibraryLady(ncjanow)
Supporter
Username: Librarylady
Post Number: 3021
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 12:40 pm: | |
I thought that I was the thread killer. Can't count how many times I am the last poster of a thread that has been running for days. Maybe it is all in our imaginations,AJC. |
C Bataille
Citizen
Username: Nakaille
Post Number: 2451
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 12:45 pm: | |
It's in mine too then, Nancy! |
CLK
Supporter
Username: Clkelley
Post Number: 1920
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 12:50 pm: | |
Me, too ....
I always assumed it was because I said something terribly insightful, and convinced everybody that my way of thinking was right.
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Lou
Citizen
Username: Flf
Post Number: 62
Registered: 8-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 12:57 pm: | |
and i thought i was the only one!
...here was i, thinking my accent was coming across my posts and everyone thought i didn't make any sense.
(feeling a bit relieved, i admit)
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ajc
Citizen
Username: Ajc
Post Number: 4787
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:10 pm: | |
...yea, it drives me nuts too.
Art G. use to tell me stay the hell off the board, the way you're killing threads, you may be killing our business!
Dave can you help all us paranoid thread killers out? Who's the worst villain of all? 
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Eats Shoots & Leaves
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 3039
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:17 pm: | |
Ooo boy--last time this topic came up, in Technology, there was a great rush to claim the title!
I do hereby indisputably claim the title of Top Thread Killer!
You don't hold a candle to my bloviating miasma of half-baked concepts and overlong words that stops threads with the dull splat of a fat bug hitting the windshield at 80 mph on a warm summer night.
(psst, Dave, quick, close this thread NOW--thanks). |
Buzzsaw
Citizen
Username: Buzzsaw
Post Number: 3869
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:22 pm: | |
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and remained alone with him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow? Out of sorts?"
"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be heard."
"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."
"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"
"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"
"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.
"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him 'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov, looking round at Bilibin with a smile.
"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all the experience of old Cunctators."
"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are situated," said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself formed.
"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's plan of a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.
"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.
"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who, till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."
"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."
"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew. "I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow's battle.
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But, my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"
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Eats Shoots & Leaves
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 3041
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:27 pm: | |
Nice try, Buzzardsaw.
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Carrie Avery
Citizen
Username: Carrie33
Post Number: 1339
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:27 pm: | |
All I can think of is this:
"Balls", said the Queen, "if I had them I'd be King" |
Buzzsaw
Citizen
Username: Buzzsaw
Post Number: 3870
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:31 pm: | |
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Eats Shoots & Leaves
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 3042
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:42 pm: | |
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Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 807
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 1:50 pm: | |
I think its all random
except in Art's case. |
The Oracle of MOL
Supporter
Username: Oracle_of_mol
Post Number: 212
Registered: 2-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 2:30 pm: | |
I know when this thread will end.
Go in peace.
--The Oracle of MOL |
Dave
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 8651
Registered: 4-1997
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 2:50 pm: | |
I never get the last word. |
Buzzsaw
Citizen
Username: Buzzsaw
Post Number: 3874
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 2:51 pm: | |
there was one? |
CLK
Supporter
Username: Clkelley
Post Number: 1922
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 3:25 pm: | |
Buzzsaw, what % of War & Peace have you posted so far? I listened to the whole thing, unabridged, on audio book in my car on the way to work. I think it took over three months.
Right now, I am listening to Anna Karenina. I am about halfway through. You could post passages from that next, and I would find it very entertaining.
Did you know that Anna Karenina is considered by many to be the best novel ever written? |
Buzzsaw
Citizen
Username: Buzzsaw
Post Number: 3875
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 4:05 pm: | |
I would say about two percent.> Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was so sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked of the day before just at dinner-time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.
"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro--not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. "Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words, or even expressing it on one's thoughts awake." And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.
"Ah, ah, ah! Oo!..." he muttered, recalling everything that had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.
"Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it's all my fault--all my fault, though I'm not to blame. That's the point of the whole situation," he reflected. "Oh, oh, oh!" he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.
"What's this? this?" she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife's words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even--anything would have been better than what he did do--his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)--utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.
"It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all," though Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he said to himself in despair, and found no answer.
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LibraryLady(ncjanow)
Supporter
Username: Librarylady
Post Number: 3024
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 4:12 pm: | |
Or you could go to www.listennj.com, download War and Peace or Anna Karenina for free to your pc and listen to the stories to yourr heart's content without clogging up the boards. |
monster
Supporter
Username: Monster
Post Number: 2121
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 4:19 pm: | |
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